A Review of Cyber-Attacks on India in 2016

The end of the year is already upon us. It is that time of the year, when we look back at last 12 months and remember all the events happened in our lives. So, let’s take a look back on how cyber-attacks compromised our secure cyber walls and exploited our networks. Almost all of us have been impacted directly or indirectly by these data security breaches. It’s always a good practice to look back in past, learn from our mistakes and reshape our future. We took a review of what went ‘wrong’ for us so that we can take a safer step into 2017.

Year 2016 has been not-so-great for digital surface, as there has been a significant rise in cyber criminals and their strategic risks of cybercrimes. India, being one of the most targeted countries, it was listed in top 5 targeted countries at risk for cyber-attacks in 2016. Probably having suffered biggest data breach in its own history ever, with nationalized banks e-payment system getting hacked, and in the end it became worse when an online guerrilla outfit named “Legion” gained access to Twitter accounts of popular Politicians. It also claims to have accessed 40000 servers across India to break the backbone of our financial network and paralyse our banking system. It’s also reported that our neighbour Pakistan has been continuously trying since long to break into the digital security of India, and Indian hackers have been replying them back with equal force by hacking Pakistani systems. But the cue is, this unstoppable cyber war is going to get worse as we step into 2017. As we all know that our country has been going through some major changes in it’s financial system and there is a significant growth in it’s motive to strengthen it’s digital walls. The ‘Digital India’ initiative should not only protect our country from it’s enemies but also from the hackers so as to safeguard people’s digital life.

As said, here is a review of various types of cyber-attacks that India has survived in 2016.